


like foals unsteady on their feet

by sajere1



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: Frederick Abberline pinches his nose. He opens his mouth – closes it. Ned worries very briefly whether the man is breathing, what with how red his face is getting. Then he lets out the longest, most pained sigh Ned has ever heard, looks up at the sky, and gestures to his feet. “Did – “ voice strangled, still looking straight up at God, as if someone, somewhere, is waiting to mercifully spirit him to a blissful death “ – did you two do this?”Ned and Jacob look down at the body beneath them, limbs splayed in death."No,” Jacob says, holding a blood-stained kukri.[an ongoing collection of quick fics about jacob, ned, and accidentally going from crime buddies to crime boyfriends, at various points in the timeline]





	1. young and drunk and stumbling on the street

Frederick Abberline pinches his nose. He opens his mouth – closes it. Ned worries very briefly whether the man is breathing, what with how red his face is getting. Then he lets out the longest, most pained sigh Ned has ever heard, looks up at the sky, and gestures to his feet. “Did – “ voice strangled, still looking straight up at God, as if someone, somewhere, is waiting to mercifully spirit him to a blissful death “ – did you two do this?”

Ned and Jacob look down at the body beneath them, limbs splayed in death.

“No,” Jacob says, holding a blood-stained kukri.

Abberline lets out another strained gurgling noise, like he’s being choked and asked to recite Dickens at the same time. “You didn’t kill this man,” he says. “This man whose armband has the symbol of at least six others who have been recently murdered, who appears to be the latest in a string of serial killings, who we found at your feet. Who several of the other guards say they saw you stab. This man. You didn’t kill him?”

“Sergeant, I can personally promise you that we did not kill this man,” Ned says. Actually, he says ‘I did not kill this man,’ which is technically true, but he says it really quiet so it’s hard to tell which he said, so no court of law could indict him as an accomplice.

“But just for you, we’ll find out who did,” Jacob says, brandishing his blade in a series of fancy flips that Ned presumes are meant to emulate detective work somehow. “Rest assured, Freddy, we won’t rest until this menace is off the streets and behind bars!”

Freddy’s look is, at once, distinctly unimpressed and very, very constipated. “We were in the area when the events occurred,” Ned says helpfully. “Would you like our witness reports?”

“Please leave.”

“Right-o!” Jacob sheaths his blade. “Should you require any further assistance, know you can always call at our door! We will search high and low for evidence! No stone shall be left unturned! This brutal killer will not escape justice! We are the night, etcetra!” And with a final flourish, Jacob locks his arm where Ned has offered and the two of them begin quickly speed-walking away, carefully angling their bodies so the bloodstain on Ned’s suit jacket is not immediately visible to passerby.

Two blocks away, with the sound of Abberline’s barely-restrained agony behind them, Jacob leans in and says, “Ned, I have a confession. I know who killed that man.”

“You owe me a new suit jacket.” Now that the immediate threat is gone – not counting the lecture on subtlety Evie is certainly already planning, somehow – Ned’s voice is brusque and his gaze dead ahead. He is, unfortunately, smiling, and can’t seem to make himself stop, which is terrible for both Jacob’s ego and the chances of actually getting a new suit jacket. “Or a very expensive fee for getting this one laundered without questions asked.”

“All the jobs I do for your money, and you don’t have enough for one measly suit jacket?” He unlinks his arm from Ned’s to press a hand to his chest, mouth schooled in a perfect expression of shocked offense. “Surely you underestimate, Mr. Wynert.”

“That money goes back to funding your enterprises, if you don’t remember.” Ned has found that the best way to carry on productive conversations with Jacob is to 1. speedwalk, so he doesn’t have the space to make his dramatic gestures, and 2. not look at him, so that he can’t try and use the puppy eyes. “They are jobs, which you are paid for. This was a personal affront. Of course, can you choose not to pay up – but you’ll owe me.”

“I’m certain I already owe you for something.”

“Well, now you’ll owe me more.” A nearby array of flowers – blooming yellow and red and beautiful – catches his eye. “We should also get something for Abberline. As an apology. Pay him back for not just gutting us.”

Jacob snorts under his breath. “Yeah, Freddy would not win that fight,” he says, following Ned’s gaze to the petunias and roses gathered together at some storefront. “Do we have to? Can’t we just call it a day?”

“As it stands, he’s done us a favor. We should return it.” Ned adjusts his glasses carefully. “Owing people is never a smart business enterprise.”

Jacob purses his lips in that whiny, childish way he does – and then he squints, and Ned knows he’s doing that Thing he does, where he focuses on the world and his genetic memory and whatever other fantastic weird magic Jacob can do (not that Jacob knows that Ned knows that Jacob can do this, of course, Ned is just very smart and Jacob is not very subtle). “Well, as luck would have it, there’s a man with one of Freddy’s bounties on his head just another minute away,” Jacob grins, roguish and distracting, and Ned said not to look at Jacob while he’s talking, dammit. “Care to play distraction one more time?”

“Suppose we’ll have to leave the flowers for another time,” Ned says, and takes Jacob’s arm as it is gracefully offered once more.

And the next day, in Ned’s occasional guest quarters on the train, when there is a small bouquet of simple yellow flowers attached to a local launderer’s business card and a few pounds – well, maybe Ned smiles a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song lyrics for the title and chapters come from "south london forever". find me on tumblr @uk-otoa or on twitter @pechebeche


	2. there's a special kind of sadness that seems to come with spring [post-sequence 8]

The streets of London have a babble to them that is easy to get lost in. Jacob likes to think of it as a companion of sorts, a nagging voice to follow him in Evie’s place, since she’s too busy gallivanting with Greenie and chasing figments to chide him anymore. It does not dim, simply shifts - ebbs and flows, like a river, or like. Humanity. Its divine nature or whatever.

That’s not the road he wants to go down with this. The short of it is: it is not very often that Jacob tunes out the noise. He likes it. It’s a friend. It’s protection.

“Mister Wynert,” he says, and the entire street around him feels dead in silence, awkward and stretched like plastic over him, “what the hell.”

“I told you I didn’t like owing people.” Ned isn’t even looking at him, for god’s sake, just staring up at the deadened lights that once announced the Alhambra with his arms crossed, like he’s got something to be smug about. “Consider the debt for my bail repaid.”

Jacob looks at the burnt remains of the Alhambra. He looks at Ned. He looks at the Alhambra.

“You bought the theatre,” he says.

“Yes.”

“For getting you out of jail once.”

“Well, it’ll be another stream of revenue, and I have a few ideas for ways you might put it to use, so I’m getting a good slice of the deal. But yes.”

There’s a lot of questions Jacob could ask - like How did you afford this? or Why did you think buying the site where I killed someone I maybe loved would be a good idea? or Ned do you even have any experience running a theater because I don’t did you think this through?? - but what comes out in the silence of the streets is simply, “Why?”

Ned turns that crooked grin to Jacob. Ned always looks a little like he’s just been told a dirty secret you don’t know about yourself, a kind of devil’s turn to all of his smiles. He looks like how noise sounds - constant, forgettable, but just a little sour, just enough to make it interesting.

“It’s your right,” Ned says, in that straightforward way he says ridiculous things. “Look, I know that between Evie the moral crusader and Henry the library aide, it’s easy to feel like shit in comparison. And I know this” - he gestures vaguely to the Alhambra, which Jacob assumes means ‘murdering the man you loved and incidentally a couple audience members’ - “didn’t help. So I figured, you take this and rebuild it into something better. Should be a piece of cake, since you’re already planning to do that with all of London.”

Jacob stares at Ned for a long moment. “…you bought an entire theater to give me a lecture on moving on.”

“I bought an entire theatre because theatre-goers are extremely rich and easy to steal from,” Ned says blithely. “The lecture is an added bonus. Plus, it was cheap, since you torched it.”

Then Ned looks at Jacob - doesn’t smirk at him or gesture to him, just looks, with a quiet intensity shining on his glasses - and says, “You made some hard calls, but they were good ones. You saved people. And, not to get too deep here, but you’re doing good work, and you deserve to feel good about it.” Ned turns that soft gaze back to the Alhambre, looking strangely frail as he rubs his arm. “I’m of the belief that the best way to build a better life is on the ashes of the old one. Your ashes are just very literal.”

Jacob is so used to noise. If it isn’t already there, he is making it, hiding his murdering smile and bloodthirsty goals beneath quips, smothering the world in easy chitchat. He doesn’t like silence. It makes it too easy to think about what he’s doing. To regret. To gnaw loneliness out from within.

But despite this - despite how desperately Jacob searches for words, cranes to hear any tune on the wind, something, anything, to brush off the quiet - despite this, Jacob is speechless.

Ned doesn’t seem too perturbed. He claps Jacob on the shoulder once, gives a last criminal grin, and leaves. Hands tucked in his pockets, hat artfully askew, looking for all the world like just a regular working man.

Jacob looks back at the Alhambre. Burnt, silent, empty. And his, he guesses.

“I have to stop asking theatre people why they do things,” is the noise he chooses to break the silence before he hedges his bets and walks towards the door.


End file.
